Perfume-themed pratfalls - could fragrance be a hazchem after all?

Could the label be more admonitory?

I have been quite disparaging in the past about the new postal regulations. These prohibit the sending of flammable liquids - including perfume - overseas, while allowing shipments of fragrance within the UK, as long as they bear an ID8000 label, declaring them to be 'exempt from requirements for dangerous goods transport document'. If they are exempt, and not considered risky to transport in this country, you have to wonder why they even have to carry such a label. Why not put one on everything from CDs and books to clothes and Interflora? After all, these things aren't dangerous either, unless you stab yourself with the roses or swallow the buttons on your Boden Henley top...

When sending perfume, it gets more tricky when you have a package full of homemade samples or decants, as is frequently my - and other fumeheads' - wont. The Post Office doesn't have a category for these, so you have to pretend they are the manufacturer's carded samples or the clerk could refuse to accept the package altogether. And because of problems with these grey areas of classification, I tend to flit from PO to PO in the hope that I will find more accommodating staff the further I roam - or staff who have yet to brand me as an awkward and deviant customer at least. I am reminded of those people who are addicted to over-the-counter painkillers, and travel far and wide to supermarkets and chemists out of their normal area, scoring a couple of packets of their analgesic of choice in each outlet.

So up till now you will have heard me speak no ill of perfume, other than to note that a few all-natural scents occasionally brought me out in a rash, prompting me to desist from wearing the stuff for a while.

Could I construe this as the 'Serge Lutens shroud'?

And then the other week, I was making up a swap package comprising lots of little vials of precisely the unorthodox type the Royal Mail cannot contend with, when I accidentally spilt a couple of ml of Serge Lutens Un Lys directly on my dining room table. It is sod's law that if such a mishap were going to happen, it would be with a Paris Exclusive of which I had very little left in the first place. However, it was not so much the wasted perfume that troubled me as the fact that old Serge fetched the varnish / colour right off a small patch of a beloved piece of furniture. Seemingly it is a case of redoing the whole top for a proper even finish, though I did have a tentative go on just the affected area with a selection of materials from olive oil to Pledge. There are some really random restorative agents cited on the Internet, would you believe? - I am sure salt and ammonia, white spirits and vinegar were amongst them. Maybe I will eventually come to think of the pale patch as yet another characterful sign of the table's great age (it dates from 1790), along with a number of other dents and black rings it has sustained down the years - presumably from flagons of porter and the like.

Resin crystals - 'myrrh trouble than it was worth'...;)

So that was one incident of perfume behaving badly...The next also occurred in the dining room, though it wasn't directly caused by perfume. Still, perfumery materials were involved and were the immediate trigger for what was to follow...

A little while ago - ever on the lookout for new ways of experiencing scent - I had a go at burning some myrrh crystals that my friend Gillie had given me around the time of the We Three Kings joint blogging project in 2010. The procedure involves igniting a charcoal disc and dropping a few crystals on it once it starts to smoulder. The crystals are supposed to emit a fragrant smoke - we are back to the very origins of perfume and its name indeed ('per fumum') - from the days when ancient Egyptians would burn incense as a sacrifice to their gods.

Except that the overriding scent I got from my own experiment was of the burning charcoal - I was strongly reminded of barbecue fuel, while the myrrh scent was undetectable. I wondered if I had set the crystals on the disc too soon, before it had settled down to a quieter burn rate - a case of 'premature incineration', if you will. Anyway, Gillie offered to come over this weekend with her own resin-burning tackle, and show me how it should be done. Accordingly, Saturday lunchtime found us sitting at my dining room table, rubbing our respective crystals in our hands to see which ones were properly fragrant. It seems my myrrh crystals had pretty much lost their scent for whatever reason, so we decided to burn a blend of Gillie's, containing frankincense and myrrh.

Before getting stuck into our pyrotechnical antics, Gillie suggested we open a window. I should mention that my windows are the old-fashioned sash style - I have since learnt that their full name is 'vertical double-hung box-framed sliding sash windows', which I find oddly amusing. I don't open my windows very often, and sometimes they are quite sticky when I try to do so, on account of a fairly recent paint job. You have to push the bottom pane up from the top with all your might, basically. We did eventually get the bottom pane to shift up, but somehow - and it is all a queasy-making blur now - I managed to trap my finger between the two wooden frames. Gillie responded with lightning speed, yanking the pane down again and freeing my rather limp and lifeless digit. An afternoon in A & E later, we established that it wasn't broken, but crushed and cut, and I will lose the nail in due course. Which is a bit ironic, as after years of nail biting I had just kicked this childhood habit for long enough to paint my nails. A purple colour to boot (Chanel Paradoxal), which is also ironic, as the injured nail is doubtless that colour naturally now, though I couldn't bear to look - not even at the X-Ray! For the rest of yesterday and all last night I had to keep the finger elevated above my heart, but I think the bleeding has stopped now, so I can do a few more things with the hand. Though not peel carrots. Or change the bedding. Or type properly.

So this one-handed post has taken rather longer than usual!

And Gillie and I agreed to take a rain check on the incense burning, possibly opening the front door instead next time. I will report back if I crack it some day and would recommend this presumably more intense fragrance experience. Meanwhile, it's back to joss sticks and matches for me. And I shan't be sporting a full set of painted nails any time soon...

The Scent Crimes Series: No 11 - Perfumed packages in bombastically big boxes

So Christmas is well and truly over, though the forest of little pots topped with tin foil lids and housing cold turkey and its concomitant roasted bits and bobs doesn't seem to diminish with each passing day - the contents of the pots just look a little less appetising as the week wears on...

On the gift front, I hope that Santa 'delivered', and that he conscientiously worked his way through your wish list.  If he had any wit, he would embed half a dozen reindeers in Amazon's Swansea warehouse, and have them on permanent standby.  My own presents included a Chanel mascara, a fat bottle of gin and a Black & Decker crevice tool, so I am well happy.

Now, newer readers may not be familiar with this long running mini-series mentioned in the title, which recounts sundry crimes against perfume - or perfume related things - that have particularly exercised me.  I wrote a flurry of posts back in 2009-10 - about anything and everything from confusing Stella flankers to the evils of bathroom storage, trigger-happy sales assistants and opaque perfume receptacles. I must have felt I got a lot of things off my chest back then in a relatively short space of time, for it is getting on for two years since I filed my last report in this sorry canon. Though I did make reference to a scent crime post in my recent piece about the new perfume shop in Stafford, called Vienna.  The one about my friend Clare's fruitless attempt to find a stockist of Mitsouko in our town, and how a sales assistant witheringly dismissed the entire house of Guerlain as 'old stuff'.

I have touched on perfume bottle - or sample vial - design a few times in this series, and now find myself increasingly bothered by the packaging of promotional products, unsolicited yet consensual consignments of which I am receiving more and more these days.  I may revisit that theme - and how I should approach such offerings (aka 'PR swag', to put it bluntly) - in my upcoming 'end of year' musings.

Then in my review of Puredistance BLACK not so long ago, I couldn't resist having a mischievous pop at the heavy duty laquered-look box that had been used to present a sample of Opardu, the brand's previous release. This was more on weight rather than size grounds, it must be said.  On an impulse, I just stuck the Opardu box on the scales and it topped out at almost 1 lb, a hefty receptacle indeed for a 2 ml sample vial!

Looks a little bigger if allowed to stand on its own box

However, the prize for the most disproportionate packaging to product has to go to a scented candle I was sent recently from a company called Rive Sud in Cannes. The one I received was a highly spiced, church incense-y number called Via della Basilica, featuring (declared) notes of incense, pepper and myrrh:

"Like a poem by Pavese, the streets will open out onto a pine-clad hill and stones, leading to the silence of the basilica."  (My rendering of the French blurb on the Rive Sud website.)

The collection of four candles was created by Cannes-based interior designer Christine Bodino in tandem with perfumer Delphine Thierry, the nose behind Cloon Keen Atelier's Castaña, which I happen to own!  I was intrigued to smell any scented product inspired by the Mediterranean, having lived on the Riviera for a year in my student days, teaching in a school in Cannes in fact, just a hop and a skip behind the Croisette. My morning commute from Antibes featured dark silhouettes of palm trees against unfeasibly lurid peachy-pink sunrises, exactly like those holiday postcards I reject on a point of principle for being too gaudy.

I haven't burnt the candle yet, but other bloggers who received the same press package as me have lit the wick and recorded their thoughts, notably Kevin of Now Smell This and Gaia at The Non-Blonde.

What surprises me is that no one has been similarly struck by the humungous big box the candle came in - or seen fit to mention it at any rate.  Compare the candle's small size on the table with a standard vase!

Possible negative 'splay' effect of the (albeit matching) roses?

And see how lost it looks amongst the polystyrene packing peanuts!

That very same outer box ended up being sent to a friend in Canada, where it comfortably transported a present for her and three further gifts for her children. So at least it was appropriately sized for that journey...

Do you have any examples of extraordinarily OTT packaging to share?  I'd love to hear about them!

Madrugada Honey Bee: Review Of L’Artisan Parfumeur Séville à l’aube

I was just looking up the Spanish word “madrugada” to doublecheck its meaning – I know it is mentioned somewhere in "The Perfume Lover", but I am not sure if I could find it now! I knew it was the Spanish word for “l’aube” ie dawn, but had a feeling that it also meant “the wee small hours”, regardless of prevailing light conditions - and as far as I can tell, it does. “Rolling-home-after-a-party-o’clock”, if you will.

And whilst satisfying my curiosity on this point, I lit upon an intriguing Google search term suggestion (a topic so interesting in its own right that I was moved to devote a whole post to it), namely “Madrugada Honey Bee Lyrics”. I couldn’t resist exploring further, and discovered that Madrugada is in fact a Norwegian rock band, and Honey Bee a love song by them, fortuitously referencing perfume and a romantic clinch not unlike the one described in “The Perfume Lover” between Denyse and Román, which inspired the creation of the perfume Séville à l’aube. (Denyse was even wearing a “black lace shift”…)

A young man should be blessed with love
There's just flesh and fire below
This drunken, senseless reeling
Hands on my face
Some silk and lace
Sweet perfume kisses
For me

Well, now that is funny, for as I was racking my brain for a title for this post – after discounting “Navel Orange-Gazing” on various grounds, not least those of provenance - my mind flitted to images around the idea of honey and nectar, which are featured in Séville à l’aube. Blow me if Google didn’t go and serve it up on a plate, or drizzle it on my keyboard, even.

Now I said in my review of “The Perfume Lover” that my corresponding write up of the perfume itself would be short. By which I meant the actual perfume review part – as ever, the rest of the post will be what it will be... For Séville à l’aube is a complex scent, and in the “mod-by-mod” account of its development I was fascinated in particular by the gradual addition, subtraction and volumetric adjustment of the various notes. This was mostly by design, and occasionally because something that had been previously included in the formulation was simply overlooked some 25 mods later, say.

“African Stone? I made him (Bertrand Duchaufour) smell it the day I told him that, in Monsieur’s opinion, the scent wasn’t erotic enough. It was dropped between 63 and 90, though not on purpose – Bertrand just forgot about it. He’ll put it in again, but he’ll also experiment with civet.” (Editor’s note - not too much it would seem, thankfully!)

Also, I remember there being at least 43 separate materials in the formulation at one point. I can’t recall the final tally, but a lot more than my nose could ever detect, it is safe to say, so I will focus on my general impressions. It would be tough for me to deconstruct this scent in a way that does justice to the glorious interplay of its components, for Séville à l’aube is as fiendishly beautiful as olfactory sudoku...

What Denyse and Bertrand set out to do was to weave different notes into the composition to capture all the fragrant aspects of that momentous night – not in some dogged box-ticking way, but with the aim of creating a composition that far transcended the sum of its components. In her excellent review of both book and scent, Mals86 of Muse In Wooden Shoes has included a handy schema that lays out what the French might call (but probably don't!) “les grands axes” of the fragrance, ie its major scent themes and how they interrelate.

To take a specific example of this associative process or "olfactory riffing", while wearing the lush and “radiant” Mod 90, Denyse explains to Bertrand that it is conjuring up images of gardens for her – “memories of sucking nectar out of flowers” - which prompts the perfumer to explain how he works with words as much as with smells:

“…like that plaza full of orange trees in full blossom buzzing with drunken bees. From there you go to beeswax candles, from candles to incense.”

THE ACTUAL PERFUME REVIEW BIT (WHICH ENDED UP BEING LONGER THAN I THOUGHT!)

I will kick off by saying that I am a fan of orange blossom scents. They are cheery and uplifting and remind me of the year I spent teaching on The French Riviera. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I own four scents in this style: Penhaligon’s Orange Blossom Cologne (also by Bertrand Duchaufour - review here), Penhaligon’s Castile (also Spanish-themed!), The Different Company Bergamote and Jo Malone Orange Blossom (which have no discernible Spanish or perfumer link that I can think of!).

And even though there was a bit of tinkering after Mod 90, and the commercial release appears likely to be 128 or thereabouts, the finished article is also pretty darn radiant: on two consecutive occasions it lasted on my skin from mid-morning till bedtime - and as some of you know, I am not noted for my early nights. Now the Jo Malone above is radiant, and so for that matter are a couple of other orange blossom-forward scents like Elie Saab and Alien. But Séville à l’aube has more heft than either of those.

Also worth noting is that it flirts with indolic notes, but only gets to first base on the skank-o-meter. In that regard it has more in common with Penhaligon’s Orange Blossom Cologne than Serge Lutens Fleurs d’Oranger, say. Even the Jo Malone is more indolic to my nose. And this might well strike people as odd, given some of the action in the book - it did me. Now I know Bertrand and Denyse were trying to incorporate the religious aspects of the Easter procession into the composition, which would have the effect of toning it down, but I find it interesting all the same that the finished article is as relatively demure as it is!

In addition to its diffusive character, Séville à l’aube feels unctuous, rich and honeyed, yet simultaneously light and sherbety – there is a powdery, pollen-like quality to the scent which persists throughout its development, a “snuffed out” facet, which I imagine must be the incense – incense AND pollen, maybe? However, it is not the dank and crypt-y kind of Etro Messe de Minuit or even Bertrand Duchaufour’s own Avignon – think of it rather as “snuffed out nectar”, if that doesn’t sound like synaesthetic gibberish. The combination of orange and incense can be tricky to pull off; another orange + incense scent by Bertrand that springs to my mind is Baume du Doge (review here), but that is darker in tone, spicier and more woody than this composition. This incense is borderline fluffy - thanks to the honey/beeswax business it is almost gourmand, but with a citrus bite.

A belated word about the opening now! It is very green and a tad too sharp for my liking. Petitgrain frenzy at a guess. There is a word in French which merely means citrus – “agrumes” – but in my mind’s eye there is a sharp, acerbic quality to this term, which is exactly how the opening smells to me. It keeps the orange heart from being too sweet and cloying, which Denyse and Bertrand were keen to do, plus it probably nudges the scent a little closer towards unisex territory. To my nose, Séville à l’aube is unequivocably feminine, however, especially after the citrus blast has subsided.

There are so many notes in there that I don’t pick up on – the lavender, for example, the blood and tobacco notes I remember reading about in the book, or the civet that I also thought had made the final cut – I am not even conscious of the vanilla particularly, though I know it's there. To me Séville à l’aube is mostly about bracing citrussy greenness seguing into a voluptuous orange heart – it is “pulpeuse” - to quote the term a sales assistant used to describe Denyse’s “blossoming” physique. But that voluptuousness is leavened by the sherbety-pollen-incense accord – which is not unlike mimosa in fact, another flower associated with Southern Europe. Now, notwithstanding the felicitous title of this post, I don’t wish to suggest that Séville à l’aube is as honeyed as Chanel Beige or as MAC Naked Honey, for that would be wide of the mark. But there is a lovely powdery pollen thing going on here, and "to beeswax lyrical" for a moment, it stains your soul…

Yes, in “The Perfume Lover” Denyse talks about how she will know they have lit upon the perfect variant of the formulation. It will be so affecting that she will let out “the moan”, just as she will have done that sultry night, locked in Roman’s embrace.

Are you ready, folks?

Mooooaaaaaaaaan!!” (reaches for credit card – oh blow, the darn thing isn’t out yet. That was a premature...er...interjection…. ; - ) ) By the way, that silver (and not intentionally suggestive-looking) atomiser pictured is the leaky one I was talking about. Do not be fooled by its seductively sleek contours and burnished metal buffness!

Moving on, I just went to google the official note listing and fetched up this general description of the scent, courtesy of Denyse herself: "an orange blossom oriental with zesty, green and balsamic effects, with notes of petitgrain, petitgrain citronnier, orange blossom absolute, beeswax absolute, incense resinoid, Luisieri lavender absolute and Siam benzoin resinoid."

My own scent memories of Seville

Now I know this perfume is not about me or my own holiday in Seville, but inevitably I cannot help but think back to that time nearly 20 years ago, when I took myself off to Spain following the recent break up of a pretty tempestuous relationship. The fact that I ended up in Seville was quite unintentional, though. I had gone to visit a friend in Soria in the north, but it snowed the entire time I was there (in May!), so after five days of shivering in inappropriate outfits, my friend packed me onto a train to Seville, and I spent the remaining five days of my trip basking in the 90F heat, happily alone in a city I consider to be the most sensual on earth (that I have been to, at least).

This was long before my perfumistahood, but if I cast my mind back and try to dredge up some scent memories of my stay, this is what I come up with:

Apple cake glaze – every morning I would sit outside a café near the Giralda cathedral with a cup of tea and a slice of apple cake, topped with that patisserie glaze that is jelly-like and vaguely perfumed.

Bocadillo de tortilla de patatas – omelette bap, effectively, but doesn’t it sound great in Spanish? : - ) I had a warm one of these for my lunch every day, purchased from a kiosk at the entrance to the Maria Luisa Park, before finding a sunny spot to flop in for the whole of each long, scorching afternoon.

Aromatic grasses – my many hours spent lying on the ground meant that I got "up close and personal" with the grass and vegetation of the park, some of it spiky and far from benign (as evidenced by the painful rash I developed that necessitated an emergency visit to a pharmacy!)

Cold stone – the contrast between the baking sunshine outside and the cool dark interiors of the churches couldn’t have been more marked, and I vividly recall that cold, damp, musty scent of flagstones in the many churches in which I sought refuge during my stay (as much to escape the heat as to marvel at Seville's ecclesiastical heritage, it must be said!)

Horse droppings – a memorable tourist attraction is the guided city tour in a horse-drawn carriage, so it doesn't take much for me to summon up the pungent pong of dung (from desiccated to steaming fresh!), especially in the area by the cathedral (see my own photo in the previous post).

Hot night flowers – one of my earliest scent memories is of arriving in Minorca on a night flight and being hit by a fragrant wall of heat as I walked down the steps of the plane. It was my first whiff of a Mediterranean summer, and wherever you go in Southern Europe you get this beautiful ambient floral bouquet in the air, especially at night.

Bonus tactile memory!

I bought this skirt and top while I was in Seville, in wonderfully slinky fabrics of viscose and acetate. I wore them for a while, before shorter hemlines came into fashion, condemning the ensemble to languish in wardrobes since the late 90s at a guess. But I note in the press that the maxi skirt is making a comeback. Mine may in fact be a midi, but I am quite stunted in the leg department. And I believe the midi itself is pretty on-trend too! So the outfit may yet enjoy a second life.

So anyway, I shall definitely be buying Séville à l’aube when it comes out. It is a stellar fragrance in its own right, plus it already feels more personal to me because I followed its gestation in the book – like a birthing partner, you could say. Or a husband coming along to ante-natal classes, perhaps, for birthing partners may only be deployed at the foetal equivalent of the "last “mod”, so to speak! But I don't have kids, so hey, what do I know? : - ) And then there are my own memories of Seville – not quite at dawn, but I saw the wrong side of 3am a few times, as I wandered aimlessly for miles by the light of a slivery (and silvery!) moon – and these also reinforce the appeal of this scent to me. For Seville symbolises my newfound single state, when I felt more energised and comfortable in my own skin (once the rash got better, obviously!) than at any point in my life, even if the height of my tactile adventures in this magical place was a clingy fabric or two and some antihistamine cream.

And if, by my serendipitous choice of title, I can introduce fans of a Norwegian rock band to a great new perfume inspired by another distant madrugada, that will be a Random Act Of Kindness in the truest sense of the term. Cheers, Google... : - )


For further impressions of both book and scent check out these reviews by Nathan Branch and the Candy Perfume Boy on Basenotes. And here on Now Smell This is an interesting Q & A session with Denyse Beaulieu, talking about her book.


Photo of Seville at dawn by Turismo de Sevilla via Flickr CC, photo of Madrugada concert by Anika via Flickr CC, photo of honey bee by Vincent Ramos via Wikimedia Commons, photo of garden with orange blossom by Anual via Wikimedia Commons, photo of Baume du Doge from Eau d'Italie website, photo of Triana district and river by Gregory Zeier via Wikimedia Commons, photo of omelette roll from Wikipedia, other photos my own

The Magdalene Complex: Review Of "The Perfume Lover" By Denyse Beaulieu

I have been "playing away" with Denyse Beaulieu's new book, "The Perfume Lover". No, really I have. You see, I had been making slow but steady progress through Lisa Chaney's biography of Coco Chanel ("An Intimate Life") - I was up to Page 180 in fact - when a copy of "The Perfume Lover" arrived from Harper Collins. It was accompanied by a sample of Séville à L'Aube, the fragrance inspired by Denyse and the subject of the book, soon to be released commercially by L'Artisan Parfumeur. The perfume was nestling in folds of pink tissue in a tiny black pot in a drawstring velvet pouch. It looked like a miniature bottle of Lanvin Arpège, and there was something so cute and enticing about the whole package of book-plus-scent-featured-in-book, that I parked the Coco Chanel biography and dived straight into "The Perfume Lover" with a sense of eager anticipation. Haha - there's the first seduction scene of the book, right out of the box... : - )

Fragrance fans everywhere are predisposed to like a book about perfume, never mind one apparently named after us all. This is precisely because - as noted in recent blog discussions about perfume writing generally - there simply aren't very many books in print on this subject, period. And some of them are a bit dry and technical and over the head of anyone who doesn't have a background in chemistry. For example, I started to lose the will to live about a third of the way through "The Secret Of Scent" by Luca Turin, and skimmed over the more arcane parts of Chandler Burr's "The Emperor Of Scent".

So I felt that this book of Denyse’s, with its subtitle "A Personal History Of Scent", was going to be the ultimate perfume book I was looking for. A literary lemming, if you will. I knew in advance of reading it that "The Perfume Lover" wove Denyse's autobiography and “scent journey” into an account of the development of a fragrance based on one specific set of her olfactory memories – those of a romantic encounter with a Spanish boy in Seville, set against the backdrop of Easter celebrations in the city.

Several other aspects drew me to "The Perfume Lover": firstly, I have myself had a very enjoyable solo holiday in Seville in the spring, if not at Easter exactly, and can testify to the off-the-scale sensuality of the place. There was a heatwave that year, and the evening temperature still hovered around an ultra-sultry 90F. I should perhaps mention that I was twice Denyse’s age at the time she met Román, and stayed in a budget hostel somewhat removed from Denyse's stylish mid-range hotel. Also, despite stopping out till 2am every night in a fairly receptive frame of mind to any possibilities the night might bring, the only “something-on-skin action” I ended up with was a bad grass allergy from afternoons spent sunbathing in the Maria Luisa park, prompting me to "hotleg it" (quite literally!) down to an out of hours pharmacy in search of "un remedio antihistamino muy rapido".

Another thing which attracted me to the book was the fact that Bertrand Duchaufour was the perfumer who offered to create the scent that would capture Denyse’s passionate clinch with her young beau. He is very much the “nez du jour” at the moment, not least thanks to his recent critically acclaimed trio of scents for Neela Vermeire, so the chance to gain an inside track on his creative MO was too good to pass up.

And then there was the added appeal of Denyse Beaulieu (owner of the highly respected blog Grain de Musc ) being the author. I have not met Denyse, though a number of other bloggers have (eg Katie Puckrik, Persolaise, and Ines & Asali of All I Am A Redhead). Moreover, such is the immediacy of the blogosphere that we fumeheads tend to feel we “know” one another even if we have never met in person. So this perceived familiarity - on however slight and virtual a premise - lent a further piquancy and interest to "The Perfume Lover" for me.

And now that I have got to the end of the book – I am a slow reader, only managing a couple of chapters in the bath a few days a week! - I can declare that I was not disappointed by it. Bemused in places, maybe, wrongfooted, startled, and occasionally shocked - but not disappointed. No, I enjoyed and savoured every page, and would happily read it again some day.

But there is a caveat to come… for though I got the book I wanted, I got a few other books besides, and I think that this attempt to be “all perfume books to all men” may end up alienating all but the hardcore perfumista, though luckily there are still a lot of us in that category. Well, discounting any fumeheads of delicate sensibilities who may be even more perturbed than me by the erotic content, so not so very “hardcore” in that sense! : - ) But I am running ahead of myself….

Yes, I clocked at least four genres in “The Pefume Lover”. The central plank of the book is a factual, “mod-by-mod” (as each version of the scent is known) account of the development of Séville à L'Aube – complete with fascinating and sparky dialogue between Bertrand and Denyse (thoughtfully captured on tape).

These exchanges chart the evolution of their relationship and collaborative style as much as the technical nuts and bolts of the creative process, though that was also amply covered, I felt. There are insights into fragrance materials and their delicate interplay, as well as the way in which Bertrand adds notes – even in the smallest, most subliminal proportions - to ensure that every scented facet of the overall Seville experience is covered off: orange blossom, incense, beeswax, blood, nectar, pollen, tobacco, vanilla, ambient cologne smells of the crowd, and so on.

Another key strand to the book is Denyse’s autobiography, which evokes her early life in Canada and emigration to Paris as a teenager. The scents which punctuated different periods of her life are also tracked, from the Max Factor Green Apple of her childhood to the masculine Van Cleef & Arpels she associated with a student boyfriend, and beyond. It is a “coming of age” or “rite of passage” story in every sense of the term, including Denyse’s maturing interest in fragrance, and I found that theme of the book the next most interesting aspect. It might even count as two. : - )

Now, although it is technically part of the autobiographical genre above, the various references to Denyse’s sexual conquests in “The Perfume Lover” (Román was just the beginning...) put me in mind of an erotic novel, although the action is all based on Denyse’s own experiences. As early as Page 11 there is a clue that readers may be in for tales of more “lovers” than they bargained for...

“I am a scent slut…I have been exploring the world of fragrance in the same way, and for the same reasons, that I’ve travelled erotic territories, spurred on by intellectual curiosity, sensuous appetites and the need to experiment with the full range of identities I could take on.”

Several casual hook ups are mentioned in the book as well as the "main male milestones" in Denyse’s “menfolk journey” (The Tomcat, her ex-husband, and Monsieur, a married lover), and the erotic charge of perfume is never far from her mind. Denyse does in fact concede that she may be suffering from “The Magdalene Complex”, a reference to Mary Magdalene, who was at once a “fallen woman” and a bearer of perfume. Certainly, the alacrity with which our heroine seems to “fall” into bed with comparative strangers conjures up scenes from that saucy series of films from the 70s starring Robin Asquith, “Confessions of a Window Cleaner” (though in the present case, substitute "postman".)

Now I consider myself to be a woman of the world, and have been around the block a bit and whatnot, so I asked myself why the raunchy material in the book troubles me. I thought it was because I feel I know Denyse, and by and large, women don’t tend to discuss the gory details of their sex lives even with their close friends - or such is my experience. Then The Candy Perfume Boy and I discussed this issue at the recent "Leather Event" (of all places!) and he pointed out that we might not want to read this sort of lurid content whether we knew Denyse or not. So I guess it all boils down - or hots up, rather! - to personal taste.

And then the other genre in our smorgasbord is a history of modern perfumery, with lots of titbits and anecdotes about the major international perfume houses, plus accounts of Denyse’s meetings with individual perfumers and other industry notables. There are some water cooler stories in there, a smattering of chemical nomenclature, and a sweeping panorama of social history as it relates to the history of fragrance and its materials.

All this additional information was unexpected, and arguably extraneous to the matter in hand, though personally I found the content of these factual digressions mostly very interesting. My main issue with this ragbag of genres is the choppy and abrupt manner in which they are intertwined. One of many cases in point: one minute we are with Denyse and her childhood friend Sylvie, reminiscing about David Cassidy and the scents of the day such as Love’s Baby Soft, then suddenly we are catapulted back to 4th century Rome with Saint Jerome and his musk-wearing flock.

The jolt between genres pulls you up short, and can make the reader impatient for a resumption of the main plotline about Bertrand Duchaufour at work on Duende, as the prototype for Séville à L'Aube is known in the book. This thematic tendency on Denyse's part to go off on educational tangents even as we keenly await the final mod of the new fragrance, reminds me of how builders working on a major house renovation have an annoying habit of going awol for a fortnight because they have suddenly picked up another job...

In summary, I think this is a book which will appeal hugely to the perfumista crowd, though readers should be prepared for it to flit between every possible style of perfume book they have ever known – in a way that may seem jumpy or even random at times. If you surrender to the elegant and lyrical prose, and follow the story through its meandering yet rewarding chicanes – and if you can step over the odd pair of dropped knickers along the way without flinching – then in my view this is as good a read as Chandler Burr's The Perfect Scent (my favourite perfume book to date), and I was sorry to turn the last page and reach the (long and distinguished) list of Acknowledgments...

A short review of Séville à L'Aube follows in the next post!

All photos my own - the ones of Seville are from my holiday there in 1995 (can you tell? : - ) ).